Ke'e Beach - Swimming with Turtles

Before I went to Hawaii the one thing that I knew I wanted to do there was swim with sea turtles.  I got to do it twice!  The first time was at Ke'e Beach located in Haena Park.  Haena is a beautiful park on the northwest side of Kauai.  It is at the end of the highway coming from the north side of the island.  There is 20 or so miles of unsettled land afterwards along the Na Pali coast.  At Ke'e beach there is a coral reef that makes great snorkeling.

I snorkeled by myself for an hour or so.  After 15 or 20 minutes I came across sea turtles and was able to observe, photograph and video them all alone.  They were grazing on coral in water that was <1' to 2' deep.  After awhile I brought back Elise and her sisters to see the turtles as well.  All of these pictures were taken with our underwater camera; it was definitely worth purchasing for this experience.  The settings are much more restricted on this camera and I had no idea how any came out until I got home.

School of fish I came across before the turtles.

I got lucky and managed to get four of the five turtles in this shot
(and some other fish photobombing).

The turtle in action.

Caught one in eating.

Elise and her sister observing my new friend turtles.
The turtles were hanging next to me, which made it easy to snag this picture.

Special bonus in this post - our first ever video!  I was even more skeptical at how these would come out, but again they were great.  I was being tossed about in the waves so it is a little jolty.  I spliced together several different clips that I took, including one with Elise examining the turtle.

n.b. the video can be enlarged to full screen by clicking the lower right.

Waterfall and Beach

After Queen's Bath we hiked back and went to Hanalei Beach.  It poured on the drive but was sunny by the time we set up on the beach.  Here are some pictures next to a waterfall on the hike and some fun ones from the beach.

Kirsten managed to photobomb perfectly.

Trying to pose and riding the wave didn't work out so well for me.

Lorrie wanted to play ring-around-the-rosie...
this is us all falling down.

Queen's Bath

Queen's bath is a rocky lagoon/beach located in Princeville.  It is named after Queen Emma, the mother of Prince Albert whose name produced Princeville.  It is a short hike off of a residential road along a creek.  The creek opens into the first pool as a beautiful waterfall.  The ocean has carved out many pools at Queen's Bath. The main 'bath', particularly in lower tides, is almost completely sundered from the ocean.

Meeting of creek and ocean.

Upon our approach to the shoreline we saw sea turtles playing in the waves.  There were at least five or six bobbing up in down along the rocks as the waves came in.  The water was almost too blue; as seen below it is an electric azure (I looked up shades of blue to try to pinpoint the beauty, it is somewhere between those two and yet something else entirely).  I got quite lost in the moment observing the turtles interact with the waves while trying to capture the bliss of the moment.  Because of the rough waves I had to be talked out of swimming in the waters right there (don't worry... I got my chance to swim with turtles later in the week).

The view approaching the first pool.

Two turtles hanging out in the waves.

One of the larger turtles up close getting a  breath of air.

After walking past the next couple of coves we finally got to the Bath.  Before swimming I stood on a small rock pointe and allowed myself to by splashed and soaked by the waves.  I sat down with my feet dangling in the low tide and the waves crashing over my head.  There was a baby turtle in the water here but I couldn't get a good picture of it with our underwater camera.

An intermediate pool and the coastline.

Elise got a nice picture of me getting absorbed by a wave.

I captured this while the waves were pounding me with an underwater camera.

The bath itself had some light snorkeling and a 6-7' cliff to jump off of.  Some kids were wanting to jump but their mother was scared so I showed them it was safe; soon everybody at the bath was lining up for the mini cliff jump.

A view of Queen's Bath, about the size of a two or three lane swimming pool.

Enjoying the jump into the Queen's Bath.

Hawaii

The past 10 days we took a family vacation with Elise's family to the Hawaiian island of Kauai.  We took over 2500 pictures (I have no idea how many we took but that seems like a good napkin estimate).  Over the next week or so we will be uploading different posts chronicling the different adventures we had there.

After a flight delay due to adverse weather conditions in Chicago (we flew out of LAX), we got to Lihue just after sunset.  I had a window seat and snapped a few pictures of said sunset from the plane; as a bonus we all saw the mythical 'green flash'.  Between getting people's luggage (I always carry-on), getting the rental car and driving it was pretty late by the time we got to our destination in Hanalei.  Since it was dark during the drive I did not get to see much of 'The Garden Isle' that night.  I woke up the next morning, and the entire week, around 6-630 am local time.  Elise got up with me the first morning and we took some pictures of our view.

If you click to enlarge the pictures you can see part of the flash.

I thought these birds were beautiful; these hung around everywhere in  Hanalei.
I gave a few nicknames, this one is chubs.

View from the balcony at 630.

One of Kauai's many waterfalls.

Enjoying breakfast with a view.

My new favorite past time- morning coffee with a view.

Many, many more to come!!  Feel free to comment below about your favorite ones or memories from the different locales on Kauai.

Underwater Fun

We get to go to Hawaii on Friday for 10 days!! I, Alex, have never been; we are both very excited.  In anticipation of snorkeling and other water related fun we got a digital water proof (30') underwater camera.  We looked into renting an underwater case for our Nikon but the cost did not seem worth it.  We will still be taking our DSLR with us, but we will have our new camera along for the fun too.  We settled on a Vivitar Vivicam 8400 for cost and functionality.  It is a regular digital camera so setting customization is much less.  It can take 8 megapixels photos as well as video.  It arrived today so we played around with it in Elise's parents pool for an hour or so to get used to it.  These are the first pictures on the blog not from a DSLR.  Besides our Nikon D60 we had used a Nikon D80 as well.  Below are some select pictures from our first go at it.

I snapped Elise floating from below the surface.
The light diffraction between water and air is pretty apparent.

Right after I jumped in.

Elise cruising around the pool.

Right after Elise jumped in.

Toy animal enjoying the jacuzzi jet.

Bubbles!